It’s 1983: Tony and I are in Seoul, South Korea. The insurance money from a burglary has given us the excuse to visit Tony’s parents in Hong Kong. We’ve left our kids with them while we visit the largest church in the world–at that time around 350,000 members–where Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho is the pastor.… Read More
Tag: church multiplication
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The hemiplegic bride
The body of Christ in the West is hemiplegic. Hemiplegia is a medical term used to describe paralysis down one side of the body, for example, after a stroke. The body of Christ is present in our churches, but half of it–the female half–is significantly weakened. Where are the women apostles? Where are the women… Read More
I often get asked questions about whether or not it’s possible for a more traditional legacy church to become involved in organic/simple/house church life. Thankfully, I now have a resource to point them to. I just finished reading Church Transfusion: Changing Your Church Organically–From the Inside Out by Neil Cole and Phil Helfer. Neil is… Read More
It’s probably not what you think! Most Christians, especially those from a more traditional form of church background, assume the obvious way to start any kind of church is to invite a few Christians to their home for fellowship. As other believers join them and the group gets large enough, they will multiply out into… Read More
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Greet the Church in Your House
Victor Choudhrie is one of my beloved “fathers in the Lord.” In 1992, even while a renowned cancer surgeon in India, the Lord told Victor to stop medicine and start planting churches. The results in the past few years have been extraordinary. One of the most outstanding disciple making movements of our day is going… Read More
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The church moves West (part 2)
The focus of Christian missions has historically moved west. This is the second of a three part series (here is part one) looking at this phenomenon, and is part of the foreword I have written to a new Kindle book, Greet the Church in Your House. by Victor Choudhrie, due out in September. This book… Read More
As I investigated the Scriptures on the subject of commercial fishing in the Gospels, several things became apparent. There are several passages that talk about fishing: Matthew 4:18-22 and Mark 1:16-19 Jesus calls the four disciples who are fishermen and tells them he will make them fishers of men. Luke 5:1-11 Jesus tells the disciples… Read More
Modern day fisherman on the Sea of Galilee While we were in Mongolia a few years back, I had a dream which over time has had a profound effect on my thinking. In the dream I was handing a small group of people a book. “It’s about how to be a commercial fisherman,” I told… Read More
I was brought up in the UK–a post-Christian culture. To be honest, there are advantages to such a situation. Where there is even mild persecution (ridicule) it produces a different standard of disciple. There’s a cost to becoming a follower of Jesus, and those who do so have counted that cost. I watched the UK… Read More
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What’s in a name? Simple church
Why the term, “simple church”? We love the story that gave the title to our book,The Rabbit and the Elephant, now republished in paperback as Small Is Big!: Unleashing the Big Impact of Intentionally Small Churches. It goes like this: Imagine you take two elephants, for our purposes, a male and a female, and you lock… Read More